No Quarter (Complicity Series Part 2)
by TheAfterglow
Summary: Her innocence was astounding, beguiling, and he used it to fan the dangerous thoughts he was beginning to entertain about being the one to teach her everything she didn't know she was missing. Mid-TFA canon-divergent "extra scene". Alternating POVs, Force bond, hints of voyeurism, angst.
1. Chapter 1

**The air between them felt electric.**

"And you….. you're _afraid_ ," she accused him, "You're afraid that you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader!"

Kylo Ren's hand snapped to his side and he stared at the girl, her eyes glistening with tears, but also with naked, unanticipated triumph. She was breathing hard from the effort, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and her sternum, hair falling loose at the edges of her face and sticking to her cheeks, her temples, but she didn't break his gaze as he stood before her, rooted to the spot with indecision. What had just _happened_? He bent deliberately to pick up his helmet where it lay on the floor, his eyes never once leaving her.

She studied him carefully and struggled fitfully against her restraints, her momentary victory feeling less so like one with each silent, passing second. Who was this man that he could see into her mind? Moreover, who was she that she could suddenly see into his? And she had seen him before he'd arrived, in her terrible vision from touching the lightsaber, foreseen him giving chase in the moss and ferns on Takodana. When he'd finally caught her, he knew she'd seen the map in the droid's memory bank. But how?

He shook his hair back with a slight toss of his head and slowly slipped the helmet on, obscuring his angular, boyish face from her view. His breath purred through the voice modulator before he finally said, "We're not finished yet." He swept past her close enough that his cape brushed her bare shins and she shuddered at contact with any part of him.

Outside in the hallway, Hux hovered nervously across from the entry to the interrogation room. He did a poor job of pretending to be occupied with something else. He sprang to life and fell into lockstep with Kylo Ren as Ren swept down the corridor towards his own quarters.

"Well?" Hux's voice was clipped, anxious. "Did you retrieve the map?"

"This will require more time," Kylo replied, feeling irritation growing with every passing stride. Hux could not possibly know how much it irked him when Hux walked in stride next to Ren. The urge to shove Hux with the Force was nearly overwhelming. Actually, everything felt overwhelming at the moment. He felt like he was drowning in her signature, her memories, her unexpected strength in the Force. He could still feel her presence halfway down the kriffing hall.

"Really," Hux drew out the syllables in disbelief, "Well, there are certainly other methods we could use to extract-"

"No!" Ren stopped abruptly. Hux stumbled a stride further before stopping and turning back to face him. "Transfer the prisoner to a holding cell, and bring her something to eat. I won't have her... damaged, or we may never locate Skywalker." He closed the distance between them until he was standing slightly over Hux, who stood up straight with his fingers laced behind his back and looked him directly in his visor. "Do you understand?"

Hux may have looked like a pushover, an overgrown, asthmatic kid for whom nepotism had opened all the right doors, but he was not easily intimidated. "We don't have unlimited time to hang around this corner of the galaxy, Ren, and this is Knights' business more than the First Order's," he huffed. "Perhaps we should consult the Supreme Leader for advice."

"The Supreme Leader does not have time to trifle with a scavenger girl, and our business is one and the same," he struggled to keep his voice even, "I will deal with it myself. Send me the girl's cell coordinates and I will meet you in the detention block. Are we clear?"

Hux sniffed as though he did not agree, but nodded curtly. "As you say."

* * *

 **A few minutes passed** and Rey was alone in the room, the first time she'd really had a look at it since regaining consciousness.

Not that it was much to look at: matte black durasteel walls, a shiny black tiled floor, a few panels glowing with all manners of buttons and blinking consoles. And of course, this infernal contraption she was strapped to. It was angled precariously in a way that was neither standing nor reclining, and while she refused to waste any more energy struggling, the restraints were biting into her wrists and shins in a most inconvenient and increasingly painful way. The light sweat that had broken out on her skin during the interrogation now felt clammy, and Rey was aware for perhaps the first time ever, here in this sterile black room, that her body had a perceptible odor.

She started as the Stormtroopers re-entered the room, braced herself for what was to come. To her surprise, they began undoing her leg restraints and she managed to give one a glancing blow in the side of its helm before a third came in to help hold her down. They undid her wrist restraints and wrestled her into a standard pair of wide, metal cuffs with her hands in front, and proceeded to jerk her unceremoniously in front of them with one leading the way, two behind her. She couldn't help but wonder what they looked like under their helmets. Finn had been human. Were they, too? If so, why were they doing this? Surely they see she was in distress. Where were they taking her?

After a five-minute march and three turns down hallways that looked identical to her, she had lost her bearings so thoroughly that she couldn't have gotten away if she'd even wanted to. But get away to what? Certainly not back to the wretched room where he'd… tortured her. Was that even the right word? His thinly-veiled threat of some kind of forcible seizure of her person had left her icy cold with dread, but he hadn't physically touched her. No, instead he had invaded her mind, until she had been able to fight him off with hers. Whatever it had been, it had not been pleasant.

They finally stopped in front of a door, and the lead Trooper entered an access code. The blast door retracted into the wall with a swoosh and the Troopers behind her gave her a light shove into a tiny, dim room.

"No, wait-" she exclaimed, holding out her hands in front of her, but their expressionless masks were cut off by the door hissing closed between them.

She was alone, and still shackled. Rey turned once, slowly, taking in the new quarters.

It was tiny, a narrow room with sloping walls that narrowed to an acute angle above her head. She could stand upright, but she knew she was not very tall. A skinny, unpadded bench ran along one side, and for lack of anything else to do, she gingerly sat down on the edge of it. The wall sloped behind her such that she couldn't sit up straight, but rather had to lean forward with her elbows on her knees.

 _Fuck_ , she thought. _Just, fuck_.

* * *

 **Inside his quarters** , Kylo Ren stood staring at his grandfather's half-melted mask. The damaged mouth guard dripped down in what looked like a permanent sneer.

The girl had reached her cell, he could _feel_ it. He could feel her growing dread, her sinking estimation of the possibility of escape, and the tinges of despair just edging into her mind. Good. He had never had a prisoner resist him like this, and he could hardly comprehend if it was somehow a deficiency in his technique or a strength he didn't know she had that had allowed it. She had gotten into _his_ mind, thrown his fear back at him. She had not been wrong, how could she be - she had plucked the very thought from his own head.

He paced slowly in circles around the low table where Vader's mask lay, brushing his gloved fingertips over it as he passed, forcing himself to breathe deeply and evenly. He would not be undone with one trick by an untrained, nascent Force user. Hux's suggestion of turning so quickly to Snoke had nearly sent him over the edge, but he had no wish to revisit the inquiry board that had resulted from the last time he'd nearly choked Hux out over such a petty slight. Their authority over him was tenuous at best, but he had to play nice with Hux if they ever hoped to locate Skywalker.

No, he would deal with this in his own way. Clearly, stress seemed to be strengthening the girl's powers rather than weakening them, if the last four hours had taught him anything. The Force was strong on Takodana; he'd always felt it there himself, and it was no different today. He wondered what had happened at Kanata's place to make her run out into the jungle like that, where the very trees practically had their own Force signatures. He knew. He'd been there many times before, had felt them even as a child when he'd played amongst the vines and leaves while his father greased palms and traded intel over glasses of gav.

 _That_ was a separate concern altogether - that he had felt his father's presence again for the first time in many, many years. It wasn't just a trick of the trees, the memory of the forest. No, the girl had been with Solo, he'd clearly seen it in her recent memories. Her bright, inquisitive, obvious admiration for Solo rankled him. No matter.

Just then, his comm beeped softly near the door, and he crossed the room in two long strides. He picked it up and read the digital display.

 _ **GHux: Block 421, #1114.  
GHux: You're welcome.**_

He raised his hand to tap out a reply, but immediately thought better of it, clenching his fist until the leather squeaked; Hux needed to learn his orders did not require pleasantries to be carried out.


	2. Chapter 2

He took measured, unhurried strides towards the detention wing of Starkiller base, choosing the stairs over the lift to the fourth level. Being off-world wreaked havoc on his physical conditioning and he took every opportunity to do things the less convenient way to challenge himself. His quads were burning ever so slightly by the time he rounded the corner of the second hallway and the Troopers stationed outside #1114 came into view.

A tray with a meager portion of greying meat under a thin-looking sauce, a starchy pile of slop, and a multi-colored medley of unrecognizable vegetables was waiting on a cart just beside one of the Troopers. They straightened up noticeably when he stopped in front of them.

"Give her the food," he commanded, and one of them passed the tray through a tiny slot in the wall into the cell.

They all waited for several minutes, expecting her to respond, to draw the tray further into the cell.

Nothing happened.

The Troopers stood awkwardly in front of him, shifting silently from one foot to another, and he finally asked, "Is the prisoner still restrained?"

"Yes, sir," one of them mumbled. Ren held out his hand, wordlessly, for the keys. "Leave us."

He waited until the clanging of their plastoid boots on the metal grating had subsided before stepping forward to the slot through which the tray had gone. He could just make out the curve of her back, facing slightly away from the door, where she perched on the bench. Her energy felt subdued now, a hollow shell of the bright, resonant feel she had given off when she'd forced him from her mind an hour back. Still, he could feel her reaching out around her through the Force, and felt her brush the edge of his consciousness. Interesting.

She stiffened visibly at her recognition of the contact, her spine straightening to attention as she stood up, facing away from the door. She knew he was there, and her breathing moved higher and shallower, into her chest and less into her belly. She was afraid, but he didn't want to provoke her more as he suspected it would only strengthen her use of the Force even further.

He drew a deep breath as he keyed the door's code, calming his radiant energy and drawing a cloak over his thoughts. All the First Order detention facilities were programmed to use the same dumb code pattern for their cells: the first two digits of the cellblock, combined with the last two digits of the cell number itself, then one. 4-2-1-4-1. The door hissed open, and he stood in the doorway for a moment assessing things before stepping inside.

He silently swore at how kriffing small the cell was. Did no one take into account tall individuals when designing these things? He had to hunch slightly to keep from hitting his head on the apex of the ceiling. The crown of her head barely reached his collarbone, and she stood resolutely in front of him, not moving, barely breathing.

"Are you not hungry?" he asked.

She bowed her head, then tilted it to the side. "No. As if I could eat with my hands like this, anyway."

The cell was deeper than it was wide, and she took a step further away from him before turning slowly around to face him. Her eyes raked over him once, quickly, before she cast her gaze down and a bit to the side. She was deliberately avoiding eye contact, or what could pass for it with his helmet on.

"Give me your hands," he held out one of his in offering, the key in his other.

She glanced suspiciously at his outstretched palm, shifted her weight between her feet as though she might be considering charging him, but thought better of it and closed the gap between them just enough to stretch out her wrists to him. He cupped her hands with his, tiny but calloused with dirty, mechanic's fingernails, and rotated them gently to turn the lock face-up to him. The hex key turned the mechanism and the cuffs popped open. She jerked back so quickly the teeth of the restraint scraped her wrists where they were already raw from the interrogation room. Instinctively she put her stinging flesh to her mouth, and turned away again.

He ignored the slight burn he felt on his own wrist, under his glove, tossing the cuffs on the bench beside her leg. It annoyed him to have to hunch like this while standing. "You should eat," he tried again. "You might be here awhile."

Her shoulders sagged a little, almost imperceptibly, at the truth of that statement. He was getting to her, he could tell. She dropped her arms back to her side and rolled her neck a bit, trying to keep calm. He could feel her energy returning though, beginning to coil in her center as she wrestled with her fear, her desire to strike out at him, to run, to do _anything_ to get away from him, off this planet, and back to her new-found allies.

Slowly, he sat down onto the bench. It was set ridiculously into the wall so that he couldn't sit upright, but she was taller than him now, and he figured it might make him seem less threatening.

"I know you're hungry," Ren said, this time projecting onto her a bit, "Maz's place doesn't have very good food."

"It certainly doesn't now that it's a pile of rubble!" she spat back. "How many innocent people had to die for you to drag me here?"

He refused to take that bait. Her indignation was frankly a bit amusing. Instead, he wordlessly took the tray from its perch and placed it beside him on the bench. "It's getting cold."

She heaved a sigh and glanced suspiciously at the soggy offering. "What if it's drugged, or you poisoned that? Why should I do _anything_ you tell me? You can't just go inside other people's heads and-"

She broke off mid-rant when she heard the low chuckle that was the only appropriate response he could offer. Her righteous anger at him was by turns amusing and annoying; here she was, barely 2 days off that backwater planet she'd been dumped on for how long? And she dared tell him what he could and couldn't do? It was simultaneously insufferable and invigorating to have a challenge like this. An excitement that was beginning to feel dangerously close to desire was starting to twist his guts a little.

" _I_ can't go in other people's heads? That's ironic coming from you, _Rey_ ," he said pointedly. Her eyes went wide at his use of her name, then narrowed out of hatred. _Good_.

Her resolve seemed to weaken at his acknowledgment of her ability to invade his mind, and she finally sank down on the bench too, with the tray between them. A rudimentary utensil, a device that was bizarre combination of a spoon, a fork and a knife, but lacking any real tines or sharp edges that could be used for self-harm or self-defense, lay next to the plate. She ignored it completely, testing the mound of what he guessed to be a tuber starch with her pinky instead. It was perhaps the least dirty of her fingers.

He watched her carefully in his peripheral vision, not actively staring at her, but keeping his body angled away from her as she gingerly examined the food. She took a dollop of the starch on her pinky and shoved it into her mouth, sucking the last of the goo off her skin audibly. She repeated the motion, again with the starch, then with the gravy languishing on the meat. She poked at the meat with her index finger, ignored it and moved on to the vegetables. Each lump she picked up individually, sniffed it, peered at it, then gently put it onto her tongue - green, orange, yellow, purple. A few more dollops of the starch, this time swirled in the meat gravy for good measure. Her expression was beginning to soften ever so slightly, particularly near her eyes, and he briefly wondered when she'd last had this much to eat at one time. Her memories had been shot through with an abiding, unadulterated sense of hunger that he'd never felt himself, or from anyone.

"What is that," she asked abruptly, around a mouthful of vegetables. She pointed to the meat with her filthy index finger.

"Meat?"

"From a real animal?" she cocked her head to one side. "One that was alive in this millennium?"

"Yes?" He wasn't sure if she was joking.

She made a gutteral noise that was a cross between a grunt and a moan before seizing the topmost slice of meat between her thumb and forefinger and lifting it, dripping its disgusting gravy, to her small, even teeth. Her eyes closed and he could see her eyes roll back a little as she bit it, tore off a chunk and chewed it, mouth slightly open.

He had to look away then, couldn't stand to spy on her anymore. Even having to hear the sounds she was making was brutal enough. Watching her eat was making him feel very, very strange. It was both intimate and alienating, like watching a pack animal brought in from the desert shamelessly eating its fill at the feed trough. She looked like a human girl, but he was having trouble identifying with her at all in this moment. He closed his eyes and very gently, he felt for the edge of her mind, and found her open, distracted by the meager feast, not expecting him whatsoever.

Her mind was a confusing jumble. He had expected to find the map in her recent memories; if the blasted Resistance droid had only been marooned on Jakku when that shit Dameron had been taken into custody, after the ambush on that old fool Tekka, she would've seen the output in the last two day cycles. Instead he found himself flicking through her endless, useless forages into scuttled destroyers, feeling the ache in her fingers as she scrubbed 30 years of desert grime from precious metals, tasting the fibrous, starchy insta-portions she'd subsisted on for who knew how long. Where was the map? He saw the traitor FN-2187, helmet-less and sweating as they worked feverishly to fix the motivator of the Millennium Falcon. And then, he saw Han Solo's face _in_ the Falcon.

He drew a sharp breath under his helmet at this recollection, and she stopped chewing, looking at him sharply. He was suddenly feeling overly warm, even sweating a bit under his robes, but refused to remove his helmet again for this scavenger. Why had he done that? Perhaps if he'd not had that moment of weakness - and it _was_ weakness, not even he was so arrogant so as not to see that - he wouldn't be sitting here next to this girl as she slurped down the revolting prison portions he'd served her.

"Were you raised by bloggins?!" he exclaimed, breaking the silence. "You eat like a kriffing animal!"

She looked stricken at this, dropping the remaining piece of meat she'd been clutching back onto the plate. She opened her mouth to retort, but snapped it shut again and turned away to lick her fingers some more. "You can forget about finding Luke Skywalker if you keep talking to me like that."

He stood up abruptly and stopped just short of banging his head on the ceiling. "You," he said, his temper rising, "You have no business saying anything to me about Skywalker! 6 hours ago you thought the Force was a myth, and now you have the nerve to threaten me, girl?"

Her eyes were wide now, but she didn't break eye contact as she stared him down. He could feel her stumbling about, trying to get into his mind again, and he clamped down his defenses against her. "Don't even try to do that again," he warned. "You won't like what you find."

Wordlessly, she shook her head and turned her back to him again. "You want to hunt Skywalker down… the same as Vader did. You know how that ended, I suppose."

He would not listen to this from her, from a nothing desert scavenger who had simply been in the wrong place at the right time, a half-starved waif biding her time until someone long gone came to retrieve her? How _dare_ she? He whirled and pressed his hand to the access panel, opening the door and striding from the room silently. He waited a fraction of a second until the door closed between them before he unleashed a final assault on her mind.

This time, he made sure she knew he was there - he used no finesse, and showed no deference to her fragile, human dignity. He saw things she didn't think anyone would ever know, things she'd forgotten herself or had shoved down so deep inside they could no longer disturb her sleep in the hovel she called her home. He raked through them, discarding each fragment as casually as worthless scrap metal and moving on to the next. Only when he sensed her slide onto the floor and actually _felt_ her bare knees touching the metal flooring as though it were his own, did he withdraw from her mind.

 _We're not through yet_ , he projected into her mind, and he knew she heard him when he felt the hot tears beginning to sting her eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

Kylo Ren believed in order and ritual, and removed his clothes in the same order, every time: gloves, helmet, cloak, belt. He was then free to draw his tunic over his head, then the fitted, long-sleeved black shirt. Boots, then pants.

Tonight though, he flung his gloves hard into a corner, kicked one boot off while it was still half-laced, undid his belt with one hand as he was tearing off his helmet the other. All those pieces went on the floor in an unceremonious trail behind him on his way to the mat where he sank to his knees in meditation pose, the chilly, recirculated air a welcome respite on his sweating back and chest. Mindless of his posture, he smoothed his shaking hands down his thighs several times and tried to rein in his breathing, shift it to his belly and out of his upper chest where it had been stubbornly stuck during the whole walk to his quarters from the detention block.

He failed miserably, thinking he had it several times over, only to discover he was merely holding hot lungfuls of air as he caught himself breathing shallowly out of his nose into the uppermost reaches of his chest. He scrubbed his open palms slowly on the cloth of his pants, forcing himself to take in the sensation of the cloth sliding beneath them, feeling the warmth radiating from his inner thigh muscles to his hands.

Again he had the sensation of simply _drowning_ from being in her mind; it was inexplicable. Her memories felt like a pool where he could see the light above, but no matter how long he held his breath and swam towards it, he could never break the surface. Never before in years of probing subjects' minds had he encountered this sensation, and he was at a loss to know how to begin to process it. It both excited and frightened him; even the strange feeling he'd gotten in his low belly as they'd verbally sparred was foreign to him. He had wanted to keep needling her endlessly to feel her irritation and fear in return. The thought of her retorts was physically exciting to him.

 _Stop_ , he told himself, _you know how to do this. Examine and internalize; discard nothing. Leave no stone unturned._

And so he did.

He saw her descend into countless ships, ones not unlike the _Finalizer_ , in search of a new piece of precious scrap that would barely earn her enough portions to keep from feeling such hunger in the night in would rob her of sleep. He felt her frustration at her boss's capricious estimation of her finds, her eventual resignation tinged with an empty resolve to go harder and deeper the next day in search of something more obscure and priceless.

He saw her tiny home in the carcass of an AT-AT walker half-entombed in the shifting sands of Jakku, a ragtag collection of things she'd scavenged from ships and considered too dear to sell, and those she'd bartered for at Niima, some of which she'd gone hungry for. There were old Imperial maps of the galaxy covering a few of the walls, and a small stack of old paper encyclopedias pilfered from some ancient ship's library.

He saw too, as through her own eyes, the day she'd first thought she was dying, bleeding slowly to death with no one to help her or miss her when she was gone. There was a dry, rusty looking stain high on her inner thigh, but her fingers had come away wet with a dark red blood when she'd dared touch herself between her legs. It had lasted several days, one so bad she'd stayed home from scrapping to nestle in her pile of rags, but the hunger and the ache of looking at a strange wall covered in tiny hash marks had driven her back out the next. She began marking the days of the aberration on the opposite wall. After 3 days it had stopped, and she thanked the stars until it happened again some 29-odd hashes later. Three days of overlap in the hashes, then nothing. Then again. By the fourth time, she came to accept that she was not dying, and that it was the new normal. She learned to fashion a different undergarment of rags she didn't care about, which she buried each time in the dunes a few clicks away after the bleeding stopped.

This had been fewer years earlier than a hand's worth of digits.

He swallowed hard and clenched his eyes closed as he followed her through the stalls and alleys of Niima Outpost, felt the hungry, predatory eyes of others on her ripening form and felt her sensing it, but refusing to acknowledge them. Only once she was alone, safe in her cave did she wonder what they wanted with her.

The weight of his realization of her ignorance of her own body bent him forward, moved him to place his forehead on the mat and his forearms on the floor in an effort to steady himself. Of course she wouldn't know, how could she?

He let his sense of self-consciousness go completely as he watched her in the night, replayed how she staved off the feelings that accompanied a confusing, conflicting sense of pride and shame at stares she drew from perfect strangers. When she could no longer sleep from the agitation she felt over it, she knelt and stared out at the stars and the distant planets and absently skimmed her hands over her lips, her neck, down to her neat breasts, feeling how her nipples responded to her touch, first gentle but then harder, pinching herself until it stung. She smoothed her palms down over the planes of her ribs, feeling her skin goose pimpled in the slightly chilly night air as she reached her hipbones where they jutted above the hem of her undergarment. She cautiously dipped two fingers into the waistband and swirled them in the dark thatch of curls that had grown in some years before, delighting in the slightly ticklish but increasingly heated and urgent sensation that was mounting in her groin. It was both uncomfortable and welcome, the urge to touch herself there, where no one else ever had, and she gingerly tested the cleft between her legs and gasped to find it wet with a slippery, warm secretion that her own body had produced. It glistened on her fingers in the moonlight, and he could taste her on his _own tongue_ , salty and heady, when she put her fingers curiously to her mouth.

Ren shook his head slightly back and forth, feeling the mat under his forehead at his hairline, and forced himself to straighten back up into a kneeling position. His breathing control was quickly edging from shallow to none whatsoever. The memory was so detailed, so clear to him, it was like he was there watching her in person, hidden in the shadows. It excited him to watch her. It had always excited him to watch, period.

Her hand slid back down her flat stomach and now she dragged her undergarments down around her thighs, further testing between her legs with her first two fingers, cautiously tracing back and forth in her folds, redistributing some of the wetness back to what felt like the center of the steadily insistent warmth that was blossoming in the triangle at her uppermost thighs.

He was having trouble restraining himself at this point, difficulty staying passive at the memory and fighting the urge to insert himself into the narrative, move it from _her_ memory to _his_ fantasies. Her innocence was astounding, beguiling, and he used it to fan the dangerous thoughts he was beginning to entertain about being the one to teach her everything she didn't know she was missing.

Just then his comm link beeped softly from across the room and he grunted in annoyance at the interruption. He could feel the cloth of his pants acutely over his erection as he walked across the room to check it.

 _ **GHux: Well?**_  
 _ **GHux: Do u have the map.**_  
 _ **GHux: Troopers had no report for me.**_

Ulgh, the kriffing map, _no_ , he didn't have it yet. He adjusted his trousers slightly as he returned to the mat, falling to his knees so quickly that they stung where they connected with the floor. The map was in her head, somewhere, but there were far more interesting things at the moment.

Back at her memory, after a couple hesitant strokes of her grubby index finger around the swollen, sensitive head of her sex, she dared to feel gently beneath herself, closer to the place she bled from regularly now, and inhaled sharply to discover that she could slide her finger _into_ her body. It seemed like it were something that should hurt, but instead, oh, no, the sensation of it was a heady mix of emotions and physical pleasure she had never felt before. Her other hand went to her breast, and she rubbed firmly in circles, pinching her nipple between her thumb and forefinger, gently, then hard enough to make her eyes tear slightly. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was getting ragged now, working her finger in and out of herself, first one, then- _ow_ -two, but it felt so much better after just a couple more strokes and now she had the notion that yet another might feel even better. The want in her was building to a dangerous peak of some sort, where she felt so full, but like she could never be full enough to satisfy her.

Her desire for a _more_ that she couldn't even fully conceive of finally pitched her forward onto one hand, onto all fours and he was nearly undone by this. She crouched, placing her damp cheek against the chilly metal hull of her home, and thought of the animals she'd seen together in the desert. The great beasts would circle one another warily until one inevitably mounted the other from behind, their grunts and roars frightening in their ferocity, until it subsided some time later. Her hips strained up and back, her hand working feverishly now against her pubis, trying desperately to satisfy both the urge to fill herself up with _something_ and to stroke the center of her want more directly. His own breath was short and quick now, wishing he had been there to be her counterpart. He would've obliged her in every way, used his fingers and tongue and teeth on her, _in_ her. She pictured no partner for herself, but instinct drove her to taste the skin of the upper arm that supported her, suck hard at it as she finally gave up trying to penetrate herself and dedicatedly worked her pruned fingertips against her swollen sex until she finally broke.

Ren blushed hot now, his blood coloring his cheeks and he bit his lower lip _hard_ as he watched her come, riding waves of pleasure like she had never known, nothing approaching that which she felt from eating more portions than was strictly required, or smiling at Old Traz, or finding the most precious bit in the dusty sands of a ship's belly, or from anything. He was floored by how long it seemed to last, thick crests of _need satisfied_ , how she continued to rub in lazy semi-circles over the spot to force the sensation to continue, to deepen. It was so unlike his own pleasure, he was a tad jealous.

He knew there was no going back now, no sense in staving off the inevitable. He rose from his crouch and entered his 'fresher, silently thanking whatever powers for a countless time that he had the luxury of private accommodations and that he was not an ascetic Jedi. The shower was nearly scalding hot but the black industrial tile was cold against his lower back as he bent over in the narrow stall, bracing one hand against the opposite wall as he pleasured himself. It was was a matter of a few short minutes until he came, picturing himself behind her, filling her up with his cock, feeling her buck her hips against him and cry his name, begging him for more.

He stood in the shower a good 15 minutes after the water had drained away the evidence of his activities before emerging and drying himself with a chamois. Good, now that that was out of the way, he could concentrate on his objective.


	4. Chapter 4

She crouched on the floor with the bench poking into her upper back for a long while after she could no longer hear his steps in the hallway. Her forehead rested on her bony knees, her forearms circled around her shins, grasping each wrist with the opposite hand. Unbelievably enough, his last assault on her mind had been more brutal than the one before, and she let the tears that had welled up in her eyes fall onto her thighs as she thought about the things he'd seen. If he'd wanted the kriffing map, why had he needed to see all _that_? She shook her head slowly back and forth, wondering what utility he could possibly have with knowing her mortification at her developing body, with watching her as she…. she didn't know what the word even was for what she did in the night when she couldn't sleep.

Except now that she knew another human knew about it, she felt a twisting sense of unease deep in her middle. She carefully packed the feeling away, boxed it off and left it. For now at least.

Eventually, though, she did as always: she got up. Standing at the very end of her cell, she began measuring with her only tool available, her body. Silently she counted her steps, heel-to-toe, from one side of the cell to the other, lengthwise, then breadthwise. 24 Rey-steps by 14 Rey-steps, she mentally noted. Approximately 12 by 7 Imperial Measures, if the conversions she'd made from the encyclopedias she'd found in the ships on Jakku were correct. Reaching her arms overhead and standing up on her tiptoes, she could just brush the dim lighting array in the ceiling with her fingertips. The room was perhaps just over six IMs tall.

Now she ran her fingers over each crevice where the durasteel panels were knit together, and found them satisfyingly but disappointingly solidly welded. She whistled a low note of appreciation: both the Imperial destroyers and this newer First Order facility seemed to be solidly constructed. Her admiration at the craftsmanship of them was not tarnished by her current status as…. a prisoner. But, where was she? She hadn't even been able to tell if this was a ship, or some kind of planet-side base. The events on Takodana were a jumble in her mind, and she paced slowly back and forth in the aisle of her cell trying to sequence them into something resembling logical order.

Finn, trying to arrange transport off-world, her begging him to stay. Then a voice calling her from the lower level of Maz's, high and keening, obviously in distress and she had felt compelled to descend the ancient stone steps to do… to _what_ , she didn't know. Despite her every instinct telling her to run at the voices she could hear whispering through the length of the hallway to the door, she entered the one where the voice seemed to emanate from. But there was no one there. Finding the wooden box, then her inquisitive scavenger's nature forced her to open it and there, nestled in the rags, was a curious piece of equipment she'd never encountered in any of her forages on ships before.

She cocked her head to the side, trailing her fingers along the cold durasteel of the narrow walls, fighting the growing tide of panic that was welling up in her core at the memory.

It was _that thing_ that had given her the… _vision_ , if that's what it had been- a lightening-fast replay of her own memories, mixed with voices she'd never heard before, scenes she'd never witnessed in person, and then the terrifying shadow of _him_ , lunging after her with a glowing, red saber drawn, her stumbling over a tree root and nearly falling in her haste to escape, the dream-like wash of relief that she'd gotten away only to be quickly startled by the nightmare realization that he was _still there_. She'd dropped the object and bolted into the hallway, only to be confronted confusingly by Maz, who insisted that the object belonged to her, called to her. She'd run from the castle, and after she and BB-8 were amongst the ferns, he had found her. Once he'd rooted her to a spot using some trickery she couldn't see, he'd realized she'd seen the map to Skywalker.

 _You've seen it. You've seen the map_. He'd sounded incredulous and angry. His saber had been mere inches from her jawline, its spitting, red blade radiating heat and giving off tiny sparks that had fallen hot against the span of her shoulder. And then…

She'd awakened, strapped down for examination. She sighed deeply at the residual panic she was still feeling from that episode. The food in her stomach was giving her a drowsy feeling, but she refused to let herself fall asleep. Who knew what could happen if she did. After pacing awhile longer, she sank back into her crouch and gradually let her mind wander back to what she'd seen when she'd managed to reverse his assault on her mind and turn it back into his own. The effort of it had raised a light sweat on her brow, as though she were physically exerting a pressure towards him. There had been a strong resistance, a few reversals back and forth between them, until she had simply fallen in, and the first thing she'd happened on was a dark well of loneliness, prideful arrogance, and unexpectedly, fear.

There were the briefest flashes of what she presumed to be his memories, too quick for her to parse in the heated moment, but now she found she was able to slow them down, still-frame them in her mind's eye and observe more carefully. More than just the images, she realized she could _sense_ his feelings as he'd been part of them. A woman's face, kind and strong, but always a bit sad behind her brown eyes. A group of adolescents, watching him with wary expressions as he sparred with an unseen teacher using a wooden staff, a feeling of vengeful pride blossoming in his chest. Standing alone in a docking bay watching a ship recede into the atmo until it was speck that blurred with the stars.

It had been a strong feeling of inferiority that had lead her to his thought of Darth Vader, a deep, uncut vein of yearning, a desire to do more and be more, and she hated herself for admitting… she felt it sometimes, too. But she shook her head against the nascent thought of sympathy with this monster. They were nothing alike, he and she. It sickened her to think what he'd done to countless others, if his treatment of her had been any indication, and even thinking back over her own imprisonment lead her to hate him more deeply than she thought herself capable of.

Thinking back over the events of the day, she saw arched, paneled glass of the Millennium Falcon's cockpit, the stars lengthening into streaks as the ship pulled forward and lurched into hyperspace. Her guts felt like they'd been stretched forward out of her middle, then mashed back in. She glanced over at Han next to her in the pilot's seat, his gnarled, scarred warrior's hands steady on the controls, and felt a sense of overwhelming comfort, of _being taken care of_ for perhaps the first time ever. Things would be alright. Han looked over at her, winked, and said, "Not bad for an old hunk of junk, huh kid?"

Chewie roared a short bark of agreement from the jumpseat behind her, and she felt his great, hairy hands squeezing her shoulders in reassurance. But…. no, that wasn't right, Chewie had been wounded, in the med bay with Finn. She glanced down then at her lap and _it was not her own_. She saw a child's legs, dangling off the edge of the seat, a child's hands rubbing nervously on its thighs to calm the queasy feeling of flight sickness.

 _This was not her own memory_.

She opened her eyes and stared around her in disbelief. What had he said to her?

 _Han Solo… He would've disappointed you_.

She scowled now, eyes closed, as she sifted through his memories until she happened onto it: a gawky boy, tall for his age, standing at Solo's elbow, watching the man shaving. To get the man's attention, he'd deliberately knocked the cake of soap into the sink without touching it, watching earnestly as the bar did a few neat slides in the basin before settling at the drain.

"Did you just do that?" Solo's voice was unexpectedly sharp, surprising her.

The boy shrugged, suddenly apprehensive at Solo's displeasure. "I taught myself how to move things."

They stared at each other for a long time in the mirror, Solo rinsing his razor and flicking the water into the basin without breaking eye contact. Finally he said, "Maybe you should tell your mother about that, kid."

She raised her head suddenly and stood bolt upright, paced several turns back and forth in the room. She knew what it meant, danger to Han, mortal danger to everyone she knew who'd been left behind on Takodana. If Han had known Luke, and she had the map to Skywalker's whereabouts in her stupid brain, and this man wanted it… Han was but a link in the chain to the end goal, as was she, and Finn, and everyone else in the Resistance, most likely.

Her breath came shallowly now as she turned tight circles, her knuckles pressed to her lips in determined thought. She had to get out of this blasted cell, had to run, had to warn them. The Troopers stood at attention outside her door again. She made her way to the door and placed her hand on it, trying to determine which side he was on. If he had been able to force himself into her mind, and she in turn had been able to insert herself into the mind of her captor and torturer under duress, perhaps she could do it at will to others? Even back on Jakku, she'd heard stories of children being kidnapped and forced into service by the First Order. Surely there was a way to exploit whatever residual humanity might remain in their heads. She placed her forehead against the cool steel of the door and pondered.


	5. Chapter 5

**Ren was much more relaxed** as he continued his rummage through her memories, concentrating instead on the girl's connection to Solo. Solo's signature was unmistakeable to him, and he'd felt it on Takodana as soon as they'd touched down, before even clearing the gangway to see the Millennium Falcon docked squalidly in plain sight. Even after all this time, it was hard for him to partition off his own memories and feelings about the man from hers, and reliving her memories of the last day was like picking at a scab to see if it still bled when the edge came up from the new skin beneath.

It bled alright.

The sensation that accompanied Rey's bright estimation of the man he so loathed sank him swiftly into a black mood. He could feel the Force thickening around him, bunching into hot coils, ready for his command. It was maddening to feel her pleasure at Solo's cautious praise and even… his approval of her handling of their situation, at how she'd hijacked, repaired and piloted his precious rustbucket. Solo trusted her, a perfect stranger, more than he'd ever trusted _his own son_ with the Falcon. He allowed his sense of unfairness, of the indignity of it all, to take over his emotions and when he couldn't stand it any more, he reached out with his hand and sent the lone chair in the room flying into the opposite wall.

It wasn't _fair_ , their easy, joccular camaraderie after being acquainted mere hours. As long as Solo continued to exist in the galaxy, the unfairness of it would continue to burn like an ember at the core of his being. He had characterized it to Master Snoke as a call to the Light, but that wasn't right, not at all.

This had to end, and he needed to bring it to resolution himself. Finding Skywalker would remain a long-range objective for the moment, as it had been for the past 10 years. A few more days, or weeks, or planetary cycles would not change that fact. For now, though, he had to end Solo. As long as Solo continued to live and breathe, Kylo knew he would feel the temptation to try to impress his father, to make him notice and believe in the power of the Force that Solo so casually dismissed. There was nothing for them now.

If the girl meant so much to Solo, her presence here on Starkiller would draw the old fool out. No sense in letting Rey languish in her cell.

He stood and began dressing to go visit her once more.

* * *

 **Rey stood silently for a long while** , pressing her forehead and then her cheek to the blast door, feeling for one of the Troopers' minds. Their presence was curiously flat, particularly in contrast to his, which had almost been been a tangible thing, a hot ember lurking under a light coating of ash, waiting to flare again if the smallest bit of kindling touched it.

Most curiously, she would swear she could still feel him after he'd disappeared. For a long while, there had been a dull ache in her middle that had finally subsided, a heated, almost throbbing sensation that might've driven her to touch herself, had she been alone. A few minutes earlier she had felt a dark wave of emotion weighing her down, just as she'd been reliving his memories of Han Solo, but it had crested to a sharp spike, then nothingness.

"Hello?" she finally raised her voice to the door, hoping that speaking with them would excite their dull minds enough for her to pick them up. "Is anyone out there?"

She heard them shuffle outside in confusion, but no one responded. She supposed they weren't authorized to respond to her.

"I hate to bother you," she tried, "You're probably busy, but… I've really got to use the 'fresher."

Their armor made small sounds and she supposed they were looking at each other, deciding. She waited several more seconds before trying again, "Look, I'm really sorry, but I'm feeling a bit ill. I don't usually eat that much and I don't want to make a mess in here."

"Ma'am, we don't have proper clearance to release you, even in emergency situations," one of the Troopers replied by wrote.

 _Kriffing bureaucrats_ , she thought. Then suddenly the thought came to her. She'd once read a technical manual she'd nicked from one of the scuttled destroyers she'd scrapped in, one that described how the patterns to the door access codes had been standardized across fleets and facilities. What had the door code pattern been?

She drew back from the door for a moment, biting her lip and wracking her tired brain to remember. It was something like the hallway or wing number, plus the last two digits of the room number, plus another digits- a standard, 5-digit code. But where was she?

"Hello?" she called out, "I was asleep when I arrived… where are we here, anyway?" _Tell me, tell me, tell me_ , she willed silently.

"This is detention block 421, cell number 1114 of Starkiller Base, ma'am."

She gasped at this. What the sinking sands was Starkiller Base? No matter now. So the code was most likely 4214…. and then what? Rey wracked her brain, thinking over and over the manual that she could picture, but not read in her memory. What had the final digit represented?

She turned tight circles again, hugging her elbows against herself. A door was on a circuit, a circuit was a system, systems were decomposable…. circuits had switches, switches had settings, settings like… on and off. Wait, that was it - on, and off! _Binary_ , she sighed, so simple, but so effective. 0 was off, 1 was on. 4-2-1-4-1. That was the code, she was sure of it.

Now Rey felt hot with excitement, her triumph returning and flushing her cheeks as she moved near the door again. She closed her eyes and settled herself, picturing the guards outside, envisioning exactly what she wanted them to do several times in as precise of detail as she could manage. It was difficult, she found, like her brain wanted to skip over certain details and she had to slow it down, run it back a bit and fill in the gaps. She would tell them to open the door, give them the code, and pictured them turning and entering it. Then they'd leave her alone. Once she was confident she could play the entire loop of action through without losing the thread, she said:

"You will open this door, and leave this cell unguarded. The access code is 4-2-1-4-1."

"Ma'am, we don't have proper clearance to release you," the lead Trooper droned again, but she would not be deterred.

This time, she _pushed_ , the same way she had pushed against her captor, and she repeated more forcefully, "You will open this door, and leave this cell unguarded. The access code is 4-2-1-4-1."

"I will open this door, and leave this cell unguarded," she heard to her astonishment, "The access code is 4-2-1-4-1."

"And you'll drop your weapons," she added for good measure, hoping against hope.

The door slide open between them, and the Troopers stood facing her, their blasters raised. Her heart leapt into her throat.

"And we'll drop our weapons."

She was free, and armed.

* * *

 **As Ren rounded the corner** of the cellblock hallway, his stomach dropped to see the door to her cell open and unmanned. A lone blaster lay on the metal grating outside the door. He came to a stop outside the door and stared in, half expecting her to leap out him, but suddenly unsurprised at what he knew had to have happened: she'd mind-tricked the guards into releasing her.

He entered the cell and stooped, staring at the half-eaten meal, and he simply laughed. _Clever girl_ , he thought. He stood for a moment with his hands pressed against the sloping walls of the cell, chuckling at the ridiculousness of the day's events. This was even better than he could've dreamed, far more potentially crushing than what he'd planned.

She had actually managed to escape, and he could feel her energy again, glowing brightly from fairly nearby on the base. She was looking for a way out.

Just then, he felt his father's presence quite nearby as well.

"Han Solo," he breathed.

With that, he whirled and took off down the hallway. It was time.


	6. Epilogue

"You need a teacher!" he blurted the words out without consideration to how he could even begin effecting this. "I can show the ways of the Force."

His offer hung between them, unanswered.

Finally, she knocked him back into the snow with a push that was mostly the Force, only to fall a second later herself as the base shook beneath their feet.

He already knew, as the ground split apart between them, that he had been mistaken. Killing Solo would not plug the hole inside him, near where he used to sometimes feel his heart.

He would have to fill it with a new ache, and he would pursue her to join him at his side until she relented, or he would be forced show her...

 ** _No Quarter_**

* * *

 **Notes:**

 _Thanks to everyone who's been reading this fic! Happy Holidays and I'll be back in 2017 with the next installment in this verse, or you can check out my other, ongoing WWII AU Reylo fic, Right When I_ _Arrive._ ** _  
_**


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